Local Zeitgeist chapter celebrates global ZDay

And those who follow the Zeitgeist Movement say that something needs to be done.

Zeitgeist Day, or ZDay as its also known, took place around the world Sunday to symbolically demonstrate the organization's belief in global action and dedication to increase public awareness of its goals.

"Once a year in the middle of March we have an event to spread the awareness of the concepts and ideas of the Zeitgeist Movement specifically," said Michael Latham, chapter head of Zeitgeist Movement Grande Prairie. "It's a grassroots movement is pretty revolutionary because it's something that's never really been considered before."

The movement's primary element is an idea to eliminate the world's monetary system and move towards a resource-based economy. It only started in 2008, but has grown to include 400,000 members worldwide, due in large part to the popularity of the documentary film Zeitgeist Addendum.

The local chapter held a screening of the film at the Jan Cinema in Grande Prairie Sunday night as their way of marking ZDay.

"I hope they'll be a lot of people out. The problem is getting the word out, but even with small numbers we're still hoping to spread the message," Latham said. "As the events are happening all over the world we're hoping to get more and more people registered and show their support. It's really hard to get people to listen to you if you don't have the numbers."

Latham became involved with the organization two years ago after seeing the film and he says it essentially changed his life.

"I'm a pretty big fan of documentary movies as a whole and recognized the corruption in our current system is rampant. The poverty and hunger all over the world, in every country - I've never liked that and I've always felt that something needs to be done," he said.

"When I heard about this movement and the film, at first I was a little skeptical. Eliminating the monetary system is a little far out there, but the more I started looking into what they had to say and the more I liked what I saw."

Latham says there are times where even he has doubts about the feasibility of the Zeitgeist Movement, and admits it would take a long time before it would ever turn into a reality.

"This is nothing I expect to see come to fruition specifically in my lifetime. We're talking about a complete transition from our current system into a new one - that's going to be a long road for sure. It basically starts with making people aware of the root causes of the problems that we have in the system," he said.

"As we go forward it seems like the system is breaking down more and more. And as things start to break down, as the system starts to let more and more people down, then we're going to have to do something, we're going to have to change in some way - and this is the best idea I've heard to date. This is definitely the start."